Leftist Polish Leader Leaning To Right

WARSAW — If one can judge a man by the wife he chooses, then Alexsander Kwasniewski isn't your typical former Communist.

His wife, in fact, fits the profile of his political foes: Among Poland's new entrepreneurs, she is a smartly dressed, modern businesswoman whose success stems from the country's new capitalism.

Jolanta Kwasniewska began her venture two years ago with little more than a desk and a phone. Today she and a friend run their own real estate firm.

But Kwasniewska still backs her husband's left-leaning Democratic Left Alliance, confident that the party won't harm her budding business-and that it's nothing like Russia's hard-line opposition.

It's a sign of the new Poland that her husband has such a personal stake in capitalism. As leader of the post-Communist Party that won the recent parliamentary elections, Alexsander Kwasniewski is now a leading candidate for prime minister.

In fact, both he and another front-runner-Polish Peasants Party leader Waldemar Pawlak-have their roots in former Communist parties.

Many Poles are furious that a former Communist is even being considered for the post, just four years after the repressive old regime died. But Kwasniewski, 38, stuck with the Polish United Workers Party (the local name for the Communists) despite its anti-free-market and anti-free-speech policies under the old system. Critics still condemn the party for the imprisonment of Solidarity union leaders and martial law.

After the party fell to Solidarity in 1989, Kwasniewski helped transform it into the Democratic Left Alliance (known by the Polish initials SLD).

"Frankly speaking, I'm not a revolutionary man. I'm an evolutionary man. . . . I thought evolution of the communist system was possible," Kwasniewski said.

"Of course, now I understand that without opposition outside the party, all the reforms would be impossible, because the hard-line group was too strong. . . . Solidarity played a historic role."

But when Kwasniewski and his wife-to-be were students at Gdansk University, "a lot of moral authorities we knew and respected were telling us: `You intelligent young people should join the structure-because only you can change it,' " his wife recalled.

Kwasniewski-a smart politician with a good sense of humor and a good command of English-is well liked even by avid capitalists. He's seen almost as a Yuppie, with a businesswoman wife and a 12-year-old daughter who doesn't eat meat because she's "a friend of animals."

Yet many old Communists are still in his party, and even those who admire him have grave doubts about his colleagues.

Kwasniewski and other liberal SLD leaders "are only window dressing," a satirist wrote in this week's Wprost, a popular national magazine. "I'm afraid of the musty merchandise in the storeroom."

After the regime fell, those who remained in the party "heard a lot about old errors, mistakes and crimes," Kwasniewski said. But Poland kept changing rapidly and unpredictably. Solidarity's popularity plummeted and the post-Communists were back.

At first, Poles thought Solidarity's leaders would be closer to the common people. But the new team started pushing "shock-therapy" economics, which opened markets and filled once-empty shops but also brought skyrocketing unemployment and poverty.

Meanwhile, the post-Communists were no longer what they used to be. They even supported Poland's mass privatization act earlier this year.

"During our discussions (about privatization), we found our new identity," Kwasniewski said. "The majority of our deputies understood that we must live in a free-market economy."

He now calls himself a "social democrat" and, despite widespread skepticism, many agree that the SLD has shed its Communist past.

Russia's ambassador to Poland, Yuri Kashlev-who should know a Communist when he sees one-said the SLD is nothing like the hard-liners back home.

Still, free-market advocates fear that the SLD will stop economic progress in Poland by pouring money into social services and shifting the emphasis away from the newly formed private sector.

"Before the election, other politicians were saying, `Attention: The Reds are back!' My husband was accused of errors committed in the 1950s, even before he was born," said Jolanta Kwasniewska. Yet "no business is threatened" by his policies, she argued

Because Kwasniewski argues for an open democracy with a free market, it's somewhat difficult to see why he stayed in the party at all.

He said he wanted to stay true to "leftist values," such as social justice and decent living standards for all workers. His party now advocates a free market-but with "a human face."

Staying in the party "was a hard decision-maybe a hard one for you to understand," said his wife. "But these elections proved that the path he chose wasn't so bad."